Normally, Harper could spot a loser from across the class, but she didn’t feel that way about Sarah. She was brave and had shown rare kindness with the bird that day. Also, there was the odd leap of excitement in her stomach as she’d walked toward the vacant stool next to Sarah that morning. How was it no one else had wanted to sit with her? Sure, her clothing wasn’t the most feminine or flattering, and her makeup was definitely out there, but Sarah’s standoffishness and aloofness made Harper wonder what was really happening beneath the surface. Where others found her off-putting, she found her intriguing. Her response to Sarah’s confession, to tell her that she wanted to be her friend, had felt like the most natural thing in the world, because she’d meant it. What she hadn’t prepared herself for was the follow-up when Sarah had asked her why.
She had a lot of trouble answering that one little word. The truth was, she didn’t know why. She just knew that something inside her wanted to learn everything about Sarah Jamieson, and whatever that something was, it was getting louder.
“Hello? Are you going to ask him out or what?” Alexis pushed, and Harper couldn’t remember what she was supposed to be thinking about. She replayed the question and realized that she was asking about Tyler. How quickly was she supposed to jump his bones if she wanted to stake her claim on him? Yes, he was cute, and on top of that he was nice and he smelled of deodorant and cologne instead of sweat and old shoes like most boys, but she didn’t know a thing about him beyond that he liked to make silly jokes in class.
“I don’t know if I like him yet,” she said, to which Alexis pouted.
“If you decide you don’t want him, let me know, and soon. That boy’s going to get snatched up by a grade ten or eleven if someone doesn’t claim him. He is a cu-tie.” Alexis separated the word for emphasis. Harper felt like telling her right then that she could have him, but that wasn’t what was expected of her. Bronte had taught her to reinforce her place in the school hierarchy by going after the hottest guy she could find and making him her slave. For just a few handjobs and a blowjob every few months, high school boys would do practically anything for a girl. Todd carried Bronte’s books around for her, laughed at all of her jokes, and told her how pretty she was at every turn. He wasn’t even getting any from her anymore.
If Harper was going to make some guy her puppet, it might as well be Tyler. “I’m going to invite him to the park party this Friday,” she said decisively.
“I’m sure he’s already going,” Jen said.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know he’s going with me.” Harper affected a territorial tone that she didn’t actually feel. Melissa mimed snapping a whip. Harper had effectively convinced her friends even if she didn’t believe it herself. “Let’s go have a smoke.”
Outside, Jen spotted Tyler before she did. “There he is.” She elbowed Harper and nodded toward him. He was walking back to school with Sarah. It seemed so odd to her that they were brother and sister. “Go ask him,” Jen encouraged. She didn’t want to disappoint the group, so she walked right up to him. To remain at the top of the totem pole, she had to exude confidence. So, that’s what she did.
“Hey,” she greeted Tyler.
“Hey.” He nodded and stopped walking.
Harper struggled to keep her attention focused on Tyler. For some reason, she wanted to look at Sarah, who had stopped walking when Tyler did. “I wanted to make sure that you knew about the party this Friday at Eglinton Park. You should come.”
A smile spread over Tyler’s face. Clearly, he understood the implication. “I’ll be there.”
“Great,” she said, not feeling any ounce of the word. She turned to leave, then hesitated. Without looking at Sarah, she mumbled, “You should come too.” After she’d said the words, relief surged through her. She hurried back to her friends to finish her cigarette.
* * *
By the time Friday rolled around, everyone was talking about the park party, so Harper was floored when Tyler said he couldn’t go after all.
“Why not?” she asked, rejected. Whether she was into him or not, it still didn’t feel good.
He glanced at Sarah’s empty seat. “My sister doesn’t want to go.”
That was the second blow, and it hit harder than the first. Even though her invitation to Sarah had been half-assed, Harper still expected her to show up. Naïve assumption probably, but one her popularity afforded her with other people. Of course, Sarah wasn’t the type of girl to swoon at an invitation, no matter who extended it. Part of her respected that, but Harper had to think about her reputation. People expected to see her with Tyler. If he didn’t show up, it would reflect poorly on her, and Alexis might even use it as ammunition to challenge Harper’s position as leader of their group. Tyler was a pawn to keep her pedestal in the politics that was high school popularity, but she had wanted Sarah to be there.
“So, she’s just not going to come? I mean, you’re not? Neither of you are?”
“I guess not.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Why doesn’t she want to come?”
He made a face as though trying to decide how much to say, or if he should say any of it at all. “She just doesn’t think she’ll fit in,” he finally said. “She doesn’t really know anyone.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Harper said with more confidence than she felt. “You have to come tonight.”
Tyler’s face lit up when she insisted, and she realized she shouldn’t have been so forceful. Sure, she wanted him to want her, but she didn’t want to deliver on those things high school boys expected.
Tyler left Harper to figure out how she would approach Sarah. By all rights, she really wouldn’t belong and would probably be miserable there, so convincing her wasn’t going to be easy.
Unfortunately, Sarah was late for biology class. Before she showed up, someone else asked to sit with Harper, so she didn’t get a chance to talk to Sarah at all. Sarah disappeared as soon as class ended, so law would be her last chance to change Sarah’s mind before the party that night.
When she got to the portable, Sarah was sitting near the front of the class. She took a seat near the back and let out a sigh of relief. After a whole morning to prepare, Harper still wasn’t sure what to say to her. Something about being around Sarah left her inexplicably exhausted and confused. Every small conversation was fraught with tension, and never seemed to go the way Harper wanted. In fairness, though, Harper had no idea how she wanted their conversations to go, so she couldn’t really justify her disappointment.
From the back of the room, Harper was safely out of Sarah’s line of sight. As the teacher carried on about jurisprudence and Aristotle, Harper watched Sarah.
“The law is reason free from passion,” he said, and Harper took a moment to mull that over. Was anything ever free from passion? Wasn’t passion the one thing that drove people in everything that they did? Not passion in the carnal sense, but more about the love or drive or desire to do or have things. Passion guided all of her decisions, and she didn’t think that anything could ever really be free from it.
Her gaze drifted to Sarah. Without fully realizing it, she traced the contours of her body with her stare. As she drew something in the margin of her notebook, a chunk of blonde hair drifted into her field of vision and Sarah blew it out of her eyes time after time. Harper smiled. What passions made Sarah who she was? Whatever they were, Harper wanted to know all of them.
When the teacher told them to read quietly while he went to the main building to use the facilities, he left a keener in charge. Harper seized the opportunity and moved up to the empty seat beside Sarah. The keener didn’t say anything to stop her.
“Hey.”
“Hey?” Sarah arched an eyebrow. The black eyeliner and mascara were full around her eyes, but she hadn’t painted her lips black today. They were a delicate shade of pink. Sarah had a full, pouty bottom lip which captivated Harper’s attention, and gave her a funny feeling in her stomach the longer she looked at it. She didn’t know wha
t it was, but she knew that she liked it.
“I thought you were coming to the party tonight,” she said, sounding whinier than she wanted.
Sarah looked straight ahead. “You only want Ty there.”
The way that Sarah said it made Harper’s stomach clench. In truth, she’d never been excluded, and didn’t know what it was like not to be wanted and worshiped. “I invited you, didn’t I?” She elbowed Sarah’s arm playfully. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”
“Tyler told you he wouldn’t go without me, didn’t he?” she asked, turning those cold, blue eyes on her. They were like chips of ice today, and Harper chose her words carefully. Agreeing with Sarah was the safest way to answer, but it wasn’t true. She only wanted Tyler there as a way to spend time with Sarah, not the other way around. The sudden realization of her true desire unnerved her.
“He mentioned it,” she said as nonchalantly as possible, “but I want you both to come.” There, that was almost the truth, and when Sarah looked into her eyes, she lost herself in the blue depths. There was no way she could actively lie to her.
“Why?”
That was a good question. Harper didn’t know the answer, not fully, but there must be something she could say that would both appease Sarah and allow Harper to stop asking herself the same thing. “It’s the first big party of the year. Just come. If you don’t have a good time, I’m sure Tyler will take you home. You’ve got nothing to lose, and if you don’t like it, you can leave. Plain and simple. What else are you going to do tonight anyway? I heard on the news that all of the birds in the area are perfectly safe and in no need of rescuing. You’ll be bored if you don’t come.”
Sarah’s lips curled into a small smile. Slowly, she nodded her acquiescence, and Harper felt a huge grin pulling at her own cheeks.
“Thank you! Thank you! Tyler will be so happy,” Harper said excitedly, but she was the one who was ecstatic as she walked back to her seat, an ear-to-ear smile splitting her face.
CHAPTER 4
On their walk home from school, Tyler talked animatedly about how much fun the party was going to be that night, and Sarah was happy for the distraction.
“Do you think one bottle of wine is enough, or should we take something from Dad’s stash?”
“What stash?”
“He’s got like boxes of whiskey people’ve given him as gifts. He never drinks it. We could take a bottle. I bet he’d never notice, and it’d look pretty cool if we showed up with one of those.”
Sarah nodded, but inside, turmoil churned in her stomach. She was nervous. More nervous than she’d been the first day of school or any other time she could remember. She didn’t belong at that party, she knew that, but for a moment, Harper Isabelle had made her feel like she did. Sure, Harper only wanted her there so that her brother would go, but there had been that second when Sarah dared to believe that Harper wanted her there as well. It was too much to hope for. She pushed the thought away.
Once in her room, she took out her sketchbook and immediately flipped to the page she’d started a few days before, the day Harper said she wanted to be her friend. What had started out as a set of eyes, eventually became a charcoal drawing of Harper from the clavicle to the top of her soft-looking, honey-brown hair. Without colour, the picture could not do her jade eyes justice, but Sarah immensely liked the way it felt to draw her jawline, her twists of full hair, and those perfect, red lips. When she ran the charcoal over the paper, it almost felt as if she were touching Harper, tracing the side of her face with her hands, pulling down on her bottom lip with her fingers. A small fire ignited deep in her core. She loved to draw, but this felt different than it ever had before.
“Dinner!” Tyler called from the hallway, startling her.
She reluctantly hid the drawing away again. It was too personal to risk someone else finding it.
Her father and mother were already at the table with Tyler when she took her seat. They joined hands, and her father cleared his throat before he began.
“Heavenly Father, we thank you for this food. We thank you for my job which allows us to pay for this meal, and ask that you bless all of us in your light. Finally, I ask you, Lord, to keep Tyler and Sarah from going down the path of darkness, and that you keep them on the path of righteousness as they move through the cesspool of sin that is adolescence. Amen.” Her father opened his eyes, and they all repeated the last word before breaking hands and starting to eat.
“I sure wish you’d dress in something more becoming.” Her mother reached over and tucked a strand of Sarah’s blonde and purple hair away from her face. “How are the boys supposed to see how pretty you are when you hide it under all of that dark makeup and black clothing?”
“The boys don’t need to notice anything about her.” Her father swallowed down some canned corn with a large gulp of ice water. “Remember the rule, no dating until you’re sixteen, and then I expect the boy to come and pick you up respectfully, and I’ll want to meet his parents as well.”
“Da-ad.” Sarah stretched out the word in complaint, more out of habit than anything else. She didn’t even know why she was arguing. Even if she weren’t completely socially inept, no one was coming to knock on the door of a minister’s daughter.
“No arguing on this one, Sarah. The same rules apply to your brother, and I expect he’ll be as respectful as we’ve raised him to be.”
Tyler hid a smile as he bit into his bread roll. Despite what they’d been taught, Tyler seemed to be okay with breaking the rules. He drank alcohol, lied, and had sex with girls. Girls he certainly had no intention of marrying or doing anything honourable with, as their father had put it. Tyler said that what their father didn’t know couldn’t upset him, and Sarah had agreed to keep his secrets, but with a heavy heart. She didn’t like rules, especially ones put in place to control who she was and how she felt, but she felt bound by them nonetheless.
Because she was a girl, her father had been stricter with her than he’d been with Tyler. Even getting them to allow her to wear makeup and dye her hair had been a bone of contention for over a year. Finally, her mother convinced her father that maybe artists were different. They decided that as long as her clothing didn’t say anything obscene and covered her midriff, behind, and chest, and as long as she wasn’t dating any boys—which she assured them she wasn’t—she should be allowed to dress and express herself as she chose. She supposed that was pretty cool of them, even though she’d had to paint a mural in the Sunday school classroom as a trade-off.
Tyler swallowed down the last of his roast beef. “Sarah and I are going to the movies after dinner.” He lied so easily. When she tried to lie, she expected God to strike her down, or at least send some plagues her way.
“That sounds like fun. Why don’t we all go, Gerald?” her mother said imploringly to her father.
“It’s a scary movie,” Tyler said. “About that serial killer with a Halloween mask.”
“I wish you children wouldn’t watch that stuff.” She shuddered, effectively ending the subject about them tagging along. “Aren’t you two a little young for those kinds of movies?”
“Don’t worry, Mom, we’re not that impressionable.” Tyler kissed the top of her head and speedily took his dishes to the sink. Sarah followed and passed him her rinsed dishes so he could load them into the dishwasher. “We missed the first show time for dinner, so we won’t be able to get in until the nine o’clock and won’t be home until after eleven.”
“How long is the movie?” their father asked.
“I don’t know, about an hour and a half or so,” Tyler answered.
“Be home at eleven sharp.”
His tone broached no argument, so neither Sarah nor Tyler said anything before rushing upstairs to get ready for the party. They had some time before they could leave and have it look like they were going to catch the movie.
Sarah pulled her drawing out again. She didn’t have time to add to it, but she couldn’t help tracing her fingers along the
curves of Harper’s face. She was going to see her tonight, and some small part of Harper might even be happy to see her too, she dared to hope. All she wanted was Harper’s attention, even for just a moment.
When Harper had invited Tyler to the party, and Sarah as an afterthought, Tyler had been ecstatic and suggested that they go together, but she had fought him.
“I’m not going.” She’d shaken her blonde hair at him as though he were crazy.
“Why not?” He’d frowned. “Harper Isabelle just asked you to a party. That’s a fucking big deal for you.” He’d managed to look guilty as soon as the words escaped his mouth, but they were out, and they had stung.
“Nice to know what you think of me, Ty.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…well…wouldn’t it be nice if we had the same friends for once? If we could go to the same places after school and eat lunch with the same people?”
She knew what he had really been saying, and it hurt more than she had expected it to. “If you don’t want to eat lunch with me anymore, you don’t have to. I didn’t know you were that embarrassed of me. Not everyone can be the coolest guy in school, okay? I’m not like you, and I sure as hell am not like her!” She’d pointed an accusatory finger toward Harper and her friends. “She only asked me to come so she didn’t look like she was being a total bitch to your sister, which she was, by the way. She didn’t even look at me. It’s like I don’t even exist to her.” She knew as soon as she’d said the words that they were the real reason she was pissed off and taking her hurt out on her brother. “You can be king and queen of the fucking school and have a thousand babies, but I’ll never be friends with a girl like her.”
“Okay, if you don’t want to go then I won’t go either. You’re more important to me than a bunch of bitches.”
She knew that wasn’t what she wanted either, for Tyler to feel ostracized like she did on a daily basis just because she was unable to fit in and fall in line like the rest of the world. Sure, she thought the popular crowd was a bunch of brainless sheep like anyone else who wasn’t part of their group, but she loved Tyler. It was as if he’d been born to be one of them. Regardless, she’d fully intended to avoid that party at all costs. That was, of course, until Harper approached her about it.
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